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LOS ANGELES—There was a moment in the second period of Thursday night’s Maple Leafs game that said a lot about the way Toronto’s NHL team is playing this season.

Anze Kopitar, the star centreman of the L.A. Kings, was leading a 2-on-1 rush in full flight. Freed by a nifty chip pass by teammate Milan Lucic and abetted by a questionable decision by Leafs defenceman Matt Hunwick, who’d taken himself out of the play with a dubious pinch, Kopitar was clear of Toronto’s two nearest backchecking forwards by a couple of strides.

But it’s what those backchecking forwards did that was worth noticing. Leafs winger Michael Grabner broke into a furious sprint and closed the distance enough to get a stick on the puck at the moment Kopitar swooped into the Toronto zone to size up his options. Centreman Nazem Kadri, meanwhile, also gave urgent chase, ultimately limiting Kopitar’s passing lane by sliding along the ice in the manner Superman flies to the rescue.

It was just one play. They were just two backchecks. And they came in a loss — a 2-1 defeat on which the Maple Leafs were roundly outplayed by a higher class of team that’s won two of the past four Stanley Cups.

Still, the play was an example of the kind of effort that wasn’t often in evidence in Leafland a season ago. Players have said it again and again these past couple of weeks. Last season, as a Leaf, you couldn’t be sure if the guy in the next dressing room stall was going to give an effort on any given night. This season you know it for certain. So last year’s cancerous atmosphere has given way to a can-do attitude that’s defining the early days of coach Mike Babcock’s tenure and, more to the point, keeping the Leafs in game after game.

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“That’s just the whole trust factor,” Kadri had been saying before the game. “Everyone believes in each other and understands that you can’t let the guy beside you down. I think that’s really influential with our group — just going as hard as you can for the guy beside you because you don’t want to let anyone down.”

Playing the second night of a back-to-back set against a Kings team that hadn’t seen action in three days was a tall order for the visitors, and they didn’t exactly overachieve. Still, Babcock saw enough to spin the loss positively.

“I actually like our preparation. I like the way we get ready. Today we knew the first 10 minutes were going to be hard for us. And in the end we were still right there and gave ourselves a chance,” said the coach.

A night after a chippy 4-0 win in Anaheim, the Leafs often found themselves being measured up by a physical roster of heavy hitters.

Kadri, for instance, was a popular target. Kings defenceman Drew Doughty lined him up as the Leafs exited their own zone in the first period and narrowly missed a direct hit. Not long after Milan Lucic leveled Kadri in the Kings zone, and Kadri, on his keister, delivered a pointed spear to Lucic’s nether regions.

Things escalated from there. Roman Polak took his second penalty for boarding in as many nights. And while the latest instance by far costlier — the Toronto defenceman’s hit from behind on Tyler Toffoli saw him slapped with a five-minute major and a game misconduct compared with a two-minute minor for Wednesday’s hit from behind on ex-Leaf Mike Santorelli — it was arguably less egregious. The night before, when Polak drilled Santorelli into the end boards, it looked like a clearcut case. On Thursday, the situation was complicated by Toffoli’s late decision to turn his back to his defender. It was shortly after that moment that Polak, who’d been closing the gap, drove hard into Toffoli.

“If you’re the referee and the guy goes head-first into the boards, you make the call,” Babcock said. “If you’re me and the guy skates down the wall and turns into the boards and Pollie kind of trips over him and falls in, you think, ‘Why do you expose yourself to get yourself hurt?’ But that’s hockey today. We don’t protect ourselves.”

The NHL rulebook mandates a boarding penalty when a player “checks or pushes a defenseless opponent in such a manner that causes the opponent to hit or impact the boards violently or dangerously.” But it’s a judgment call, and one of the factors that has to be considered is whether the opponent put himself in the defenceless position immediately prior to the hit.

Moments after Polak left the rink, referee Kelly Sutherland absorbed a head shot — presumably an accidental one one — after a collision with Kings defenceman Jake Muzzin. Sutherland shook it off and continued calling the game.

For all the action, there wasn’t much around the Kings’ crease in the early going. The Leafs were outshot 16-6 in the first period; they’ve been outshot a combined 34-14 in the first period in the opening two games of this Pacific swing, which wraps up Saturday in San Jose.

But the Leafs, if they took a while to get situated, did not go lightly. The Kings failed to score on the first 28 shots they launched at James Reimer, who was making his first start in more than a month in the wake of a long recovery from a groin injury. But the home team’s 29th shot went in, thanks to a Muzzin walk-in from the point. And the Kings made it 2-0 early in the third period.

Reimer, for his part, said he didn’t feel “any ill effects at all” from his injury. He said that, by contrast, when he played an early December game in Minnesota while recovering from the same groin injury, he knew immediately after the game that his injury hadn’t yet healed.

Toronto struck back on the power play to make it 2-1 midway through the final frame, Peter Holland beating Jonathan Quick high glove. And the Leafs, who’d won five of their previous six games, continued to push until the final buzzer. With Reimer pulled for the final few minutes the Leafs engineered a series of chances to tie the contest. Outshot by a lot, 41-26 in the final tally, they refused to go away.

“Adversity’s been a good thing for us this year,” Kadri said this week. “In past years, we didn’t get the benefit of the doubt and rolled over for whatever reason. Now it’s just that trust. Everyone knows they’d rather let themselves down than the person next to them down. I think that’s a special thing to have.”

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